Contents

Early years

McLaren was a "war baby" born to Pete McLaren, a teenaged war deserter, and Emmy (née) Isaacs in the suburbs of post-World War II London. His father left when he was two and he was raised by his grandmother, Rose Corre Isaacs, in Stoke Newington, the formerly wealthy daughter of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish diamond dealers. McLaren told Andrew Denton on Enough Rope, that his grandmother always said to him, "It's good to be bad and it's bad to be good".[citation needed] In 'The Ghosts of Oxford Street' he says Charles Clore (who bought Selfridges) became his mother's lover. When Malcolm was six, his mother remarried to Martin Levi, a man working in London's rag trade. When McLaren was in his forties, a Sunday newspaper tracked Pete McLaren down to a "greasy spoon garage" in England.

McLaren's stepfather and mother owned a shmatte factory in London's East End called Eve Edwards London Limited. They lived well but Malcolm and his stepfather never got along. By the time he hit his teens, Malcolm left home. Following a series of jobs (including one as a wine taster), he went on to attend several Art Colleges through the 1960s, being expelled from several before leaving education entirely in 1971. It was during this time that he began to design clothing, a talent he would later utilise when he became a boutique owner.[citation needed]

He had been attracted to the Situationist movement, which promoted absurdist and provocative actions as a way of enacting social change. In 1968 McLaren had tried unsuccessfully to travel to Paris to take part in the demonstrations there. McLaren would later adopt the movement's ideas into his promotion for the various pop and rock groups with whom he was soon to involve himself.[citation needed]

The New York Dolls and SEX

In 1971, McLaren and his partner, the designer Vivienne Westwood, opened a London clothing shop called Let It Rock on the Kings Road. The shop sold Teddy Boy clothes and McLaren and Westwood also designed clothing for theatrical and cinematic productions such as That'll Be The Day and Mahler. Let It Rock proved a success but McLaren grew disillusioned with the style of shop due to problems with the Teddy Boys who were the shop's main customers. McLaren's son by Westwood, Joseph Ferdinand Corré, co-founded the lingerie brand Agent Provocateur.

McLaren traveled to New York City for a boutique fair in 1972 having already met the group the New York Dolls. That year he renamed the outlet at 430 Kings Road Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die and supplied the group with stagewear. In 1975 McLaren designed red leather costumes for the New York Dolls and used a Soviet-style hammer and sickle motif for their stage show as a provocative means of promoting them. This ploy was not successful and the Dolls soon broke up. However, it was while he was managing the Dolls that he first saw the Neon Boys perform.[citation needed] The Neon Boys included Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell, who were later to form Television. In April 1975 McLaren returned to Britain, by which time he had renamed the store SEX, selling S&M (sadomasochistic) style clothing.[1]

The Sex Pistols

By 1975 McLaren had started to manage The Strand, the band who would later become the Sex Pistols. His assistant, Bernie Rhodes (soon to be manager of The Clash), spotted Johnny Rotten who was then sporting green hair, and torn clothes with the words "I hate" scribbled on his Pink Floyd shirt. His appearance and attitude impressed McLaren and Rotten was brought in to audition as a new frontman. Rotten joined, and the band was renamed The Sex Pistols (McLaren stating he wanted them to sound like "sexy young assassins").[citation needed]

The band released their album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols in October 1977 and played their last UK gig before embarking upon an American tour in January 1978. This tour saw the band split up after a series of arguments.[citation needed] During his time managing the band McLaren was accused by band members (most notably by John Lydon) of mismanaging them and refusing to pay them when asked for money. McLaren has stated that he had planned out the entire path of the Sex Pistols and in the film, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle he set this plan out. The film was allegedly criticised for being too skewed towards McLaren and for being a launchpad for McLaren's future career in music as a performer(he performs the Max Bygraves song "You Need Hands" in the film) as well as a manager.[citation needed]

McLaren kept the Sex Pistols' contract rights until Lydon took him to court in the 1980s to win the rights and unpaid revenues from McLaren. Lydon won and gained complete control from McLaren in 1987. McLaren and Lydon have refused to speak to each other since the band split and in the 2000 film, The Filth and the Fury, the surviving members of the Sex Pistols put their version of events on film.[citation needed]

Solo musical career

In 1983 McLaren released Duck Rock, an album which mixed up influences from Africa and the Americas, including hip-hop. The album proved to be highly influential in bringing hip-hop to a wider audience in the UK. Two of the singles from the album ("Buffalo Gals" and "Double Dutch") became top-10 hits in the UK. He then turned his eyes to electronic music and opera in the 1984 single "Madame Butterfly", based on the opera. The track is arranged with drum machines, atmospheric synthesizers and spoken verses. It reached #13 in the UK and #16 in Australia. The producer of the single, Stephen Hague, became a much sought after producer in the techno pop genre following his work with McLaren on the following full length LP, Fans.

McLaren returned in 1989 with the album Waltz Darling, a funk/disco/vogueing inspired album. Waltz Darling incorporated elements of his former albums, i.e. spoken verses, string arrangements and eclectic mix of genres but featured such prominent musicians as Bootsy Collins or Jeff Beck with a glitzy, Louisiana-style production aimed at the US market. The singles, "Waltz Darling" and "Something's Jumpin' in Your Shirt" became top-20 radio hits in Europe.

In 1998 McLaren released Buffalo Gals Back 2 Skool (Virgin Records), an album featuring hip hop artists like Rakim, KRS-One, De La Soul and producer Henri Scars Struck revisiting tracks from the original Duck Rock album. In addition, that year, he created a band called Jungk. This project was not a commercial success. Also in 1997/1998, he released a track called "The Bell Song". Various remixes were released on 12" singles.

His song "About Her", based on "She's Not There" by The Zombies, rose to prominence when used by director Quentin Tarantino in Kill Bill Vol. 2. He was accused of plagiarism for this song in 2005 for allegedly copying the work of a French musician, but was cleared of the charges in November 2005 when the court in Angers, France threw out the case.[2] The song uses Esther Bigeou's "St. Louis Blues" by repeatedly playing the verse, "My man's got a heart like a rock cast in the sea."[3]

McLaren's solo work, particularly from the Duck Rock period, has also been sampled by other artists. In 1999, a group called Dope Smugglaz had a UK top twenty hit with the track "Double Double Dutch" which made extensive use of samples from McLaren's original "Double Dutch". In 1997, Mariah Carey's "Honey" and "Honey (Bad boy remix)" sample "Hey DJ (Buffalo Girls)." In 2002, Eminem released a track called "Without Me", which sampled McLaren's song, "Buffalo Gals". In 2007 McLaren's song "World's Famous" was sampled by R&B singer Amerie on the song, "Some Like It", from her album Because I Love It.

In 2006, author Paul Gorman published his book The Look: Adventures In Rock & Pop Fashion with a foreword and contributions from McLaren. The book included a CD featuring the track "Deux" from the Paris Remixes album.[citation needed]

British Airways adverts

In 1989 McLaren and composer Yanni arranged The Flower Duet into a work called Aria. The 'Flower Duet' theme, taken from the French opera Lakmé by Léo Delibes, had already been used by composer Howard Blake[4] to accompany British Airways commercials since 1984. However, from 1989 McLaren and Yanni further arranged the Flower Duet and it featured in BA's "World's favourite Airline" global advertising campaign of the 1980s and 1990s.[citation needed]

Other projects

McLaren attempted to make a film called Fashion Beast which was scripted by comic book writer Alan Moore during the 1980s. McLaren took the Fashion Beast project to NYC in 1986, and was for a time funded through NYC-based nightlife impresario and producer Robert Boykin. Avenue Pictures recommended screenwriter Steve Means to rewrite the Alan Moore script. This was contracted and several drafts later the process slowed down with the physical deterioration of producer Boykin, who subsequently died in 1988. McLaren declared the project "an orphan." The film was never made, but McLaren has been involved with other film and television projects. One such project was The Ghosts of Oxford Street, made for Channel 4 in 1991. This musical history of London's Oxford Street was directed and narrated by McLaren and included musical numbers by The Happy Mondays, Tom Jones, Rebel MC, Kirsty MacColl, John Altman and Sinéad O'Connor.[5]

In 1985, McLaren approached the Red Hot Chili Peppers, early in their career, with interests in managing them, and reinventing the group. After hearing a short, live set, McLaren was "Clearly unimpressed"-according to Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis. He then proposed to reinvent the group and have them play really stripped-down, basic punk rock, with all of the emphasis on the frontman, Kiedis. Although Kiedis was flattered to be considered, he, along with the rest of the bandmates rejected the offer. Kiedis recalled the event, saying "It was like the Wizard of Oz had spoken, and what he had said was too ludicrous to take seriously", as his proposition was very different to the band's musical style.

During 2000, there was speculation that he might stand to be elected as Mayor of London[6], although ultimately he did not run. He had an exhibition of some autobiographical work at the German Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie</ref> called "Casino of Authenticity and Karaoke" about which he gave an interview.[7][8]

McLaren is one of the producers for the film adaptation of Fast Food Nation, which premiered on 19 May 2006 at the Cannes Film Festival. It was released in late 2006. In 2006, McLaren presented the documentary series Malcolm McLaren's Musical Map of London for BBC Radio 2. This was followed in 2007 by Malcolm McLaren's Life and Times in L.A..

Also in 2007, McLaren competed in a reality TV show for ITV titled The Baron. The series was due to be shown in August 2007, but was postponed owing to the death of fellow contestant Mike Reid shortly after filming was completed. It was eventually broadcast starting on 24 April 2008. McLaren came last in the competition, which was won by Reid. It was announced on 7 November 2007 that McLaren would be one of the contestants in the seventh series of the ITV reality show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, set in the outback of Australia and premiering on British television on Monday 12 November 2007, but he pulled out the day he had flown to Australia. He told press 'it is fake', that he didn't know any of the other celebrities and quite frankly, 'he didn't have the time'. He was replaced by Katie Hopkins.

In January 2008 McLaren featured as one of the "celebrity hijackers" in the UK TV series Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack, which was broadcast on E4. In his hijack, he encouraged the housemates to remove their clothes, daub themselves in paint and produce an artwork using only their bodies and a bicycle.

Also in 2008, New York City public arts group Creative Time premiered 9 pieces of Malcolm's 21 part sound painting series entitled Shallow via MTV's massive HD screen in Times Square.[10] The series, which originally premiered at Art 39 Basel in June[11], was the first installment of an on-going public arts content partnership between Creative Time and MTV.[10].